"Fruitcake" oatmeal cookies

Amazeballs. Best after completely cooled with a nice cup of tea (or milk tea!). And yes, you can eat them for breakfast because they are oats and fruit!

1 C butter, softened (preferably Kerry Gold)
1 C sugar
1 C packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla extract
2 T dark rum
2 C flour
2 C rolled oats
1 t baking soda
1 t baking powder
1/2 t salt (increase to 1 t if using unsalted butter)
3/4 C golden raisins
3/4 C diced candied fruit, including citrus peel (i.e. https://nuts.com/driedfruit/glazedfruit/mixed-peel.html)
1 C chopped toasted pecans (optional but delicious)

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Cream the butter and sugars together, then the add eggs one at a time, mixing well to incorporate. Mix in the vanilla and the rum. In another bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. In three batches, mix the dry ingredients into the wet, then fold in the fruit and nuts.

Drop by generous tablespoon onto a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes.

Makes 4-6 dozen.

Holiday Baking

We po' this year, so gifts are homemade. I started out with salty maple-roasted pecans (no photos, sorry), which are just pecan halves coated in maple syrup and sprinkled with Kosher salt, then roasted for about 5 minutes at 450°F. Then I moved on to cookies. I started with brown butter sugar cookies for the flavor, but combined the recipe with your average sugar cookie for the look.

First, I attempted to brown 3 sticks of butter. There was a bit of an... accident... so I ended up with 1 cup of brown butter and added a stick of regular butter. Since I was ready to make the cookies, I just threw the cold stick of butter into the still-warm brown butter, which ended up working really well for the mixing.

After the butters equalized a bit, I creamed them with 1 cup each of white and brown sugars.

Next I added 4 eggs, one at a time, and 1 teaspoon of double-strength vanilla extract.

I stirred together 5 cups of all-purpose flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, and just under a teaspoon of salt (because as you know, I always use salted butter).

On low, mix the dry into the wet ingredients about 1 cup at a time. I ended up mixing in the last cup by hand because the dough was so thick my mixer was straining.

Wrap the dough and chill it for at least an hour. I do not recommend being lazy and leaving it in the bowl like I did. It stuck horribly and was a huge PITA to get out.

I let my dough chill for about 3 hours, then rolled it out on a very lightly floured surface and cut it into random shapes of cutters I have lying about (I'm not much of a dough cutter). Some of the cookies got dusted with evaporated cane juice, which gave them a nice mellow sparkle. The cookies baked on parchment at 400°F for about 7 minutes. After they cooled completely, I iced them with a mixture of icing sugar (1/2 cup) and milk(1 tablespoon). To one batch, I added about 1/2 tablespoon of blackberry-flavored corn syrup, and to another, I added a splash of almond extract and maraschino cherry juice (mostly for the color). Then, I went out and bought some cookie icing so I could make silly designs.